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Caroline Ayres just wanted to hear about her kids’ school system. What she got was the hybrid of a political rally and a revival meeting. “It was,” she recalls, “an attempt at conversion via emotional outreach.”

It happened earlier this month on Mission Street, in a Sons of Italy outpost promising reasonable rates for its hall of mirrors. There, speaker after speaker excoriated the deplorable state of San Francisco’s public schools, particularly for black and Latino students, and lauded the work of charter schools, which were described as “our private educational institutions” by an African-American clergyman.

On Jan. 1, it will become legal for adults 21 and older to buy and sell recreational marijuana in California. In anticipation, Bay Curious is answering a bunch of your questions about commercially available marijuana.

Between the singing, the prayers and the tears at Sunday’s memorial service for San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, political luminaries like Gov. Jerry Brown, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Nancy Pelosi all spoke about Lee’s life and the sacrifice he made for the city.

But perhaps the person with the most at stake was a relatively unknown member of the Board of Supervisors, the first politician to address the gathered crowd at City Hall.

On Jan. 1, California adults will be able to walk into shops and buy marijuana products for recreational use. As investors and owners get ready to cash in, an effort is underway to unionize marijuana workers. The hope is to give them more protections and a say in the rapidly expanding industry.

Earlier this month, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and East Bay Congressman Mark DeSaulnier wrote to officials at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and told them that they needed to start planning for a new vehicular and rail crossing between the Peninsula and East Bay.

Feinstein and DeSaulnier suggested that planning should start under the auspices of Regional Measure 3, a pitch to Bay Area voters to increase bridge tolls by as much as $3 to raise money for dozens of transportation projects.

The California Public Utilities Commission voted unanimously on Thursday to beef up rules for utilities that have facilities in areas where thick vegetation and strong winds make fires more dangerous.

Under the new rules, electric and telecommunications utilities will need to widen vegetation clearances around their lines. They will also have to conduct more inspections of power lines, phone lines and utility poles.

The electorate is a politician’s ultimate boss. If voters don’t like what their representatives are up to, they can throw the bums out — really.

But in recent weeks, as a wave of sexual harassment and assault allegations hits politicians in several statehouses and the nation’s Capitol, another force is proving to be as powerful as the electorate: peer pressure.

Edwin M. Lee, San Francisco’s first Asian-American mayor, died suddenly early Tuesday morning after suffering an apparent heart attack while grocery shopping. He was 65 years old.

London Breed, president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, became acting mayor upon Lee’s death.

“Ed was not a politician,” Breed said at a City Hall press conference Tuesday morning. “He did not always deliver the best sound bite. He was humble and determined. No matter the job he held, he was fair and collaborative.”

A lot of confusion still exists about Ford GoBike’s 7,000 bicycles in places like the Mission. As part of a regional public bike-sharing system, it has been linked to gentrification.

Although the company has reached out with plans for low-income residents, some believe the bikes are there only for higher-income residents. It is a problem that sparked vandalism and then calls for the program to withdraw or slow its expansion.

Last year, more than 1 in 10 students were chronically absent, according to data released by state education officials this week. Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing at least 10 percent of school days for any reason.

The data, which the state released for the first time, shows that 1 in 4 foster children was chronically absent from California schools last year as were about 1 in 5 homeless, Native American and African-American students.

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